5.1: Introduction

What we speak and how we speak is the most powerful marker of who we are. Language marks us as individuals, but also seems to be primary marker of our group identity. Language constrains and liberates our thoughts and feelings, in turn creating a battlefield where various interests compete to control of the chains of meaning attached to words and phrases. Power is thereby exercised through language. Consider the phrase, “Make America Great Again”. Stripped of context, those four words seem reasonably benign, but the way the phrase was used by Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980, and again in the presidential campaign of 2016, it has become laden with many overlapping, often competing meanings that are complex and continue to evolve. The pen, or the turn of phrase, is indeed mightier than the sword.

A language is a system of communication that persons within a community use to convey ideas and emotions. Linguistics is the study of language. Geolinguistics is a subfield in both geography and linguistics where the interests of both intersect. Most of the time, people who speak (or sign) the same language find it easy to communicate with each other. Chances are people who communicate easily with each other use a similar version of a language, known as a dialect. On the other hand, dialects within a single language can become so different from one other that people using different dialects find it impossible to understand one another. When that happens, mutual intelligibility, which is the ability for two or more people to understand one another, is no longer occurring. At that point, a dialect should be considered instead a separate language.

A breakdown of mutual intelligibility may qualify the Scottish dialect of English as a separate language called Scottish English. Certainly, many speakers of American English find that they cannot understand what Scottish people if they are from the working class or from rural districts in Scotland. Part of the problem is the difference in accent, or the way Scottish people pronounce common English words. For example, the Scottish “roll” their tongues when they pronounce words with the letter R in them and Americans do not. Americans also pronounce the word “to” like “tū” and the Scottish pronounce it like “tae”. Not only is the Scottish dialect characterized by their accent, it features a different vocabulary, phrases and word preferences as well. So for example, a Scotsman might use the phrase “wee bairn” to describe a small child, where Americans might say “little kid” instead.

There are other forms and uses of language as well. In places where two or more languages are spoken, a pidgin language may develop. Pidgin languages are simplified versions of a language or several languages that help people communicate, especially in matters of trade or business. Lots of pidgin languages have formed around the world, especially in border areas and in places where colonial empires were built. It’s easy to hear pidgin English spoken in the US among immigrants just learning the language, especially when immigrants with different home languages communicate in English. Some Hawaiians also speak a pidgin English. Sometimes a pidgin will become more complex and evolve into a language in its own right. Linguists call these formalized pidgins creole languages. Most creole languages remain unofficial, but a few, like Haitian Creole, a blend of French and West African languages, become official languages with rules about spelling and syntax, and formally taught in schools, and used by the government.